Bumin overthrows the Rouran: the Turkic Khaganate is founded

According to the Chinese histories, the Ashina had lived for generations on the southern slopes of the Altai as ironworkers of the Rouran. Under Tumen their tribes grew stronger and began to come to the Chinese frontier to buy silk. In 545 Yuwen Tai, the chancellor and real ruler of the Western Wei, sent them an envoy, the Sogdian An Nuopantuo from Jiuquan, and the Book of Zhou records that the Turks congratulated one another: now that the envoy of a great state had come, their own state would rise. In 546 Tumen sent tribute to the Wei. When the Tiele tribes set out against the Rouran, Tumen intercepted and defeated them and took the submission of more than 50,000 of their households. Emboldened, he asked the Rouran khagan Anagui for a bride and received the answer: “You are my smith slave — how dare you say such words?” Tumen killed the envoy, broke with the Rouran and turned to the Western Wei, which in the summer of 551 gave him Princess Changle.

In the first month of the first year of the Western Wei emperor Fei — February–March 552 — Tumen led his army against the Rouran and crushed them north of Huaihuang, one of the old Northern Wei frontier garrisons, near modern Zhangjiakou. Anagui killed himself, his son Anluochen fled to the Northern Qi, and the remaining Rouran chose Anagui’s uncle Dengshuzi as their ruler. Tumen took the title Illig Qaghan — the Book of Zhou likens it to the chanyu of old — and called his wife qaghatun. The Chinese histories do not say where he was proclaimed; some modern accounts place it at Ötüken in the Khangai Mountains, where the khagans later held their court, others in the Altai; the marker is placed at Ötüken approximately. Some historians date the founding to 551.

Bumin died within months, but his sons completed the conquest. Keluo (Issik Qaghan) defeated Dengshuzi, and in 555, at the demand of the khagan Muqan, the Western Wei handed over Dengshuzi and some three thousand Rouran who had fled there, and they were put to death outside the Qing Gate of Chang’an. The Book of Zhou says that under Muqan the Turkic realm stretched ten thousand li from the Liao Sea to the “Western Sea”, while Bumin’s brother Istämi, the yabghu of the west, carried Turkic power into Central Asia. Two centuries later the Orkhon inscriptions of Kül Tegin and Bilge Qaghan honoured Bumin and Istämi as the ancestors who had founded the realm.